New Study Shows Young Men with High Porn Consumption Are Less Likely to Marry

A new study shows that men who watch an “excessive” amount of pornography are less likely to get married. The study, which will be published in Sexuality & Culture, focused on the link between pornography use and marriage rates among young men.

The study, written by Samuel L. Perry from the Department of Sociology at the University of Oklahoma and Kyle C. Longest from the Department of Sociology at Furman University, also found that pornography use had no effect on marriage rates among young women.

The authors also reported that religious commitment does not change the pornography viewing among young men. The authors said, “Contrary to our expectations, religious commitment did not moderate the link between frequent pornography consumption and marriage entry for either men or women.”

The authors started with the hypothesis “higher levels of pornography viewing will be associated with a lower likelihood of entrance into marriage during early adulthood.” After their analysis, they determined that the hypothesis was “unsupported in the main.” However, they stated that this finding was skewed due to gender differences. While pornography use “was statistically unrelated to their likelihood of marriage,” they said that men who viewed porn regularly “were less likely to be married” than those who had more moderate viewing habits.

The authors expressed their surprise at the finding that religious commitments did little to change the findings among the men they surveyed. They said, “Contrary to our expectations, religious commitment did not moderate the link between frequent pornography consumption and marriage entry for either men or women.” They continued, “For young adult men it seems, viewing pornography is associated with a lower likelihood of marriage during early adulthood regardless of how religious they are.”